Mission und Geld: Wie das OEuvre de la Propagation de la Foi seine Mittel verteilte.

Founded by lay Catholics in Lyon, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith provided funding for Catholic missions between 1822 and 1922. It distributed donations collected from Catholics to missionary ventures around the world. The article follows the central question of how the OPF distributed its financial resources. An analysis of financial f lows shows that attention shifted from the Euro-Atlantic area to Asia, Africa, and Oceania over the course of the nineteenth century. This was associated with a change in mission ideas: the missions engaged in new fields of activity and increasingly followed a development paradigm. The historicity of need can be shown by a combined analysis of money amounts and money discourses. The article thus examines financial relationships below the state and inter-state levels and sheds light on a facet beyond government action. Instead, it is shown how non-state actors used money to change international structures in the long run: Religious actors shaped new fields of action in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]